Friday, August 22, 2014

Ind. Gov't. - "Purdue releases surveillance video of confrontation"

Updating Aug. 12 and Aug. 13th posts, this story today by Chris Morisse Vizza in the Lafayette Journal Courier links to, and reports on, the video at issue, which the Purdue administration has now uploaded to YouTube. Some quotes from the story:

Purdue University released on its website the surveillance video at the center of a lawsuit filed by the Purdue Exponent.

The newspaper, operated by Purdue Student Publishing Foundation Inc., last week filed suit to compel the university to provide a copy of the video of a confrontation between police officers and photojournalist Michael Takeda. * * *

Purdue showed the video clip to Takeda, Kuhnle and the newspaper's attorney earlier this year, but the university declined to release a copy of the video until today.

The Indiana Public Access Counselor in April supported Purdue's claim that the video should not be released because it is part of an ongoing police investigation.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana then filed suit on behalf of the Exponent.

Purdue legal council Steven R. Schultz on Wednesday submitted a copy of the video to Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 Judge Thomas Busch, and proposed that the university would post the video online after receiving permission from the judge, and county prosecutor Pat Harrington.

The university issued a press release Thursday that stated the prosecutor approved the video release and provided a link to the video posted on YouTube.

Releasing the video to the public does not necessarily resolve the lawsuit, said Kelly Eskew, ACLU of Indiana staff attorney.

"Purdue University has not provided us with a copy of the video, so we have not been able to confirm that it is the complete video of the encounter between the Exponent's photographer and law enforcement," Eskew said.

"If it is the video we asked Purdue to release, we are pleased that it is now publicly available since it is a public record as defined under the Access to Public Records Act."